On Monday, SIG SAUER is scheduled to release the details of its P320 voluntary upgrade program. Owners concerned with the drop safety vulnerability identified here can choose to send their gun(s) in to receive new fire control group components. But do those components truly resolve the issue?
To find out, SIG brought us to their headquarters in New Hampshire. They informed us that they installed the trigger components from the M17 (the Army’s version of the P320) into the commercial P320, did 2,200 drop tests over the course of the weekend, and that the new parts resolve the drop safety vulnerability.
Then they showed us. Into the Test Lab we went, where three commercial P320s with the reduced-mass trigger, sear, and striker plus the new sear cage and trigger disconnect had been installed. A primed, but otherwise empty case was inserted and each gun was discharged the old fashioned way to verify function.
A new, primer-only case was chambered and dummy rounds were used in the magazine for weight. Then each gun was suspended on a test rig four feet over solid concrete at the problematic -30° orientation, and dropped. Three times each. After each drop, the chambered “round” was fired and a new one was inserted.
Nine drops right on the money, zero discharges. Additionally, zero striker releases. In TTAG’s testing and, from the data SIG showed us, in their testing, there were incidents where the striker slipped off the sear but the striker block safety was still in place and, therefore, the gun did not fire. With the upgrade parts, the incidents of striker release were significantly reduced.
While further, independent testing will certainly be done — including by TTAG once our P320 comes back with the official upgrade parts installed — it certainly looks promising. There’s no way TTAG’s P320 would have made it through nine drops, let alone three or likely even one, without discharging in the testing we witnessed.
SIG states that they’ve dropped the new configuration from four feet and up, right at this problem angle, more than 2,200 times plus more in other orientations, and have been doing extensive finite element analysis modeling. They’re confident that the M17 trigger components eliminate the drop safety vulnerability.